Tuesday, 22 February 2011

Gimme the Beet!

Beets... Beets... Beets the magical fruit (well vegetable) the more you eat the more you well eat..

Beets are definitely one of the most magical vegetables in my honest opinion. The taste, smell, and flavour of a beet is one of the most interesting profiles a vegetable has to offer. It can be bitter, sweet, and tangy depending on the methods of cooking it is put through. I even recently have seen that Michael Blackie has used a dehydrator in order to make beet salt. I mean a beet can be boiled, roasted, pan fried, and even deep fried and the profile still stands up. I mean hell you can even pickle a beet and its magical. It can be eaten cold or hot and it's still magical. A beet also has a very long season and can be found fresh through most months of the year.

Here are a few ideas for beets:

Mix them into your next batch of mashed potatoes

Boil them off and let em chill and served with some goat cheese or creme fraiche

Goulash and soups

Pickle them and serve em with some gravlax and smoked salmon

Hell even mash em into a gnocchi mix and let it turn a beautiful red

The water is also a great natural colouring agent

I have also had some conceptual ideas perhaps using beets blended with herbs to make a beet consume using cheese cloth, or somehow working them into a dumpling, or using them in a stir fry as a mild sweetener.

Anyways, I'd love to hear your experiences with beets and ideas you may have. So drop that sweet beet!

Cheers

P.S I know I used magical a few..... times wait until I do a post on Heirloom tomatoes and then you'll see the sparks fly